Awestruck: A Guide to Feeling More Alive

Turning everyday moments into magic

When I was a kid, I was a strong believer in magic

I had faith and was able to find proof everywhere I went. I still remember vividly Siberian winter nights, when I was walking back from school, and it was pitch black dark, aside from what light was coming from the windows and reflecting off the snow. And it was those windless nights, with heavy piles of snow covering the pine branches and more fluffy snowflakes lazily drifting from the skies, and the quiet — God, it was so crazy quiet! — that’s when I was absolutely sure that the patterns of lit-up windows on our apartment buildings were the way of the Universe to communicate with me. I was eight or maybe ten, and I would sit on a bench in front of my house and watch the windows light up, trying to decipher this new message from the Universe…

The snow, the dog, and a Mack truck of memory

Last winter, when the DMV got snowed-in and most people wisely stayed in at night, I took my dog out at an unusually late time. And it hit me like a Mack truck — the quiet, the snow, the lack of any movement in the air, with lit-up windows of the neighborhood — just like when I was a kid. The beauty of nature combined with the power of memories swept me with such a crashing feeling of awe, my knees buckled. Another annoying chore of walking the dog in the cold turned into an emotional experience of significant strength and meaning.

What is awe and why does it matter?

Awe is an emotion that hasn’t been yet riding waves of hype, but I have a feeling it may very well change. Because awe is what allows us to turn the mundane into wonder, to feel deeply rooted and connected to the world, and to believe in magic again.

According to Dacher Keltner, and the research he put into his book, “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”

In other words, when we experience awe, we are transported from wherever we were into the very real here and now, seeing and feeling something so beyond our daily hustles that it pulls us with it, reminding us of true values and the enormity of the world we are part of. It makes us feel small and insignificant, but at the same time, connected and belonging.

Awe is a powerhouse of manipulation.

It bears too much power over our emotional state to be ignored. But while manipulating emotions can, and often is, a shitty thing to use on someone, it is also a remarkable tool to use on oneself.

The eight wonders of life

Keltner suggests eight “wonders of life” that serve as awe-inducing catalysts:

1. Most commonly, people around the world feel awe when witnessing other people’s moral beauty: courage, kindness, overcoming, or strength. We get moved by the purity of intentions, the goodness of someone’s heart.

2. The second wonder of life is linked to our social nature and the need to belong to a tribe. It’s called collective effervescence and means “the feeling of heightened energy, unity, and emotional connection that arises when a group of people come together and participate in a shared activity or ritual. It’s a feeling of being swept away by the collective experience, often associated with rituals, celebrations, concerts, or even intense moments of shared purpose.”

3. Nature is the third wonder. Interestingly, awe-inspiring events aren’t necessarily peaceful, but often cataclysmic: earthquakes, lightning, tornadoes, floods… All those disasters make us feel both small and connected to each other at the same time, shaking up our understanding of ourselves and of how the world works. But there is of course another side of natural awe: starry skies and northern lights, mountains and canyons, giant trees and alpine meadows, vast ocean and endless desert. The sense that plants and animals are aware and conscious. Ever tried looking a dog in the eye? We can experience connection with pretty much all animals, especially pets (except for domesticated cats, which is funny), elevating each other’s levels of oxytocin — the love hormone.

4. My personal favorite way to induce awe and manipulate my emotional state is the fourth wonder of life — music. Music is another way of communicating meanings without verbal language. And processing complex emotions too. Every time I’m lacking words to label what I’m experiencing, listening to music or performing helps me come to terms with the experience and process all the feelings related to it. And I will never be able to count all the occasions when music took my breath away and turned me into a naked wire with the intensity of sensations.

5. Visual design is number five. Buildings, sculptures, paintings, jewels — you name it.

6. Stories of spiritual and religious awe, the mix of mystical awe with feeling warmly embraced, or being seen.

7. Stories of life and death: the miracle of life creation when a cell becomes a person, as well as its abrupt ending when this living and breathing person just stops existing.

8. The last wonder of life is epiphanies — sudden understanding of some essential truth about life. They come in different flavors: from scientific discoveries and philosophical ideas to unexpected disclosures.

What doesn’t spark awe (spoiler: it’s not your stuff)

Fun fact: while collecting the stories of awe all over the world, Keltner and his team created a list of what didn’t make it to become an inspiration for awe. Not a single person mentioned their consumer purchases, gadgets, or cars. Money in general wasn’t discussed. Awe lives beyond the mundane.

The wisdom of Amelie (and questionable parenting choices)

Have you seen the movie Amelie? I have just rewatched it with my daughter, which was a poor-ish parenting choice by the way, as I didn’t remember how not age-appropriate the movie is. But sex-shop scenes aside, we had a very thoughtful conversation afterwards about how the tiniest details may carry a lot of meaning, and how small actions can transform something mundane into something wondrous.

The choice to create awe

We have a choice of how we view the world. Amelie’s character chose to look at it with deep curiosity and attention to details. Also, she was always ready to turn a routine task into an adventure. Everyone can choose to do it every once in a while. And it seems that the more magical moments we create, the more awe we induce in others and ourselves — the more connected we become to our own selves, each other, and the world we inhabit.